TWINSBURG, Ohio – The clerk at the candy shop does not want to cry. She is determinedly cheerful, a professional smiler, dressed head to toe in bright turquoise.
But standing next to a display of plastic-wrapped candles and teddy bears, her face crumples at the most basic of questions: Are you doing OK?
"I'm sorry," she says, wiping her eyes with a shirt sleeve, her voice a shaky whisper. "Because at the end of the month, there's nothing left. I don't know what to say. It's almost getting to the point where I don't know what we're going to do anymore."
For four years now, Julie Bittner has rung up customers in this little store on the charming grassy square at the heart of Twinsburg, Ohio. And from her view by the front window, she has watched the fortunes of a ransacked autoworkers' mecca slowly drain away. Streets once teeming with people are now deserted. Some days, she says, not a soul comes through the door.
She's seen the headlines. The recession is ending! Unemployment is stabilizing! From Wall Street to Washington, the message comes: America, the worst is over. Let the spending begin. But in places like Twinsburg — where for so many the misery goes on, unabated — people aren't buying the rhetoric. If brighter days are ahead, they say, they're still awaiting the dawn.
According to an Associated Press-GfK poll conducted in early April, many Americans' impressions of the economy — and their own financial straits — haven't budged in a long time.
"Who are they trying to kid?" Bittner says. "Are they trying to make you think it's better so you'll go out and spend?"
Well, yes. The nation's fragile consumer confidence, which sank to a record low about a year ago, could keep the fledgling economic recovery stuck in first gear, says Ken Goldstein, an economist at the Conference Board, a research group that keeps close tabs on consumers.
"And when you're stuck in first gear," he warns, "there's more chance to hit a pothole than if you are cruising over an open stretch of highway."
In April, just 25 percent of Americans believed the economy was getting better, the exact same percentage as in September, according to the AP poll. An overwhelming 76 percent rated the economy these days as poor, compared with just 21 percent who said the economy was "good" overall.
But on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that the economy is growing faster than the White House expected, and that people are spending more. Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress that growth in demand by consumers and businesses will promote a moderate economic recovery in coming months.
That kind of good news is especially hard to reconcile in Twinsburg, considering the current state of affairs in Ohio, among the states most battered by the recession. Ohio's economy has actually worsened in the past year, according to the AP's monthly analysis of conditions in more than 3,100 counties and 50 states. In February, it was the eighth-most distressed state in the U.S.
In Clark County, Nev., home to Las Vegas, the unemployment rate has soared from 10.1 percent to 13.9 percent in the past year. The same can be said for California's Central Valley, where the unemployment rate in places like Merced County remains stubbornly high, and where 1 out of 16 homes is in some phase of foreclosure.
In Twinsburg, where workers press metal sheets into car door panels, things are only about to get worse. By now, the story of this place is practically a cliche: declining auto town in the heartland gone to rust.
But look around. The houses are well-kept and middle-class. The lawns have been mowed. There's a Starbucks and a Walgreens and a pretty white church with a steeple.
People live here. And right now, they're staring into a future that looks like a black hole.
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